I am in a situation where I no longer have enough room to keep my floor standing speakers. I have an Axiom center speaker and was thinking about buying a pair of the M22s. I will be placing them in a bookshelf off the sides of the 60" plasma. I am worried about sound issues as they are rear ported.

I wanted to see how other M22 owners have mounted / placed their speakers.

I have M22's in an open bookshelf with a 60" tv. I don't have boundary issues to deal with, I have them about 1/2 inch protruding from the shelf. You may get reinforced bass if you have them in an enclosure, which isn't a bad thing, I would think. There were some discussions with M22's about additional bass response when placed near a corner or a wall a while back.

My M22v3s sound wonderful in my HT but they sit in the open on a pair Velodyne subs for stands. They are quite tall & rear ported, so that may be a problem if you are placing them 'in' a closed type bookshelf system.

I also have a couple of M3v3s (on Axiom 24" stands) that are shorter & perform well without the need for a sub for most music - rear ported again though.

If you can work any of these into your system, I believe that you'll be most happy with Axiom products despite what a few others may say elsewhere.

There is some compromise putting bookshelf speakers in a bookshelf, but it's not the rear porting that's the issue--a few inches behind the rear port is sufficient to let the speaker vent. Rather, it's the adjacent boundaries of the shelving that you don't want interfering with the output of the drivers, which is why we at Axiom suggest you have the front baffle of the speaker protruding from the bookshelf by an inch if you can manage it (a couple of centimeters in metric). If you do that, you'll keep compromises in sound quality to a minimum.

Dusty, as the replies of Alan and Nach indicate, if you don't recess the speakers "in" the bookshelf, but have them protrude slightly, reflections and refractions are minimized and there should be no significant problem.

Would it be better to go with a pair of M3s over the M22s to guarantee they will be standing upright? I really don't want to compromise the size of the speakers but may not have a choice. How much different do the M22s sound compared to the M3s? I will have 2 subwoofers playing as well.